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I hosted my first open gaming event on Sunday, April 13, at my home in
Sherwood, OR. We had a great turnout, we three folks I’ve gamed with before
(Ken, Brandon, and Kevin) and three newcomers (Matt, Jeremy, and Elliott)
joining the fray. I’ll do this again sometime in May, so let me
know if you’d like to be on my notification
list.

This was everyone’s first time playing the new Builders and Traders expansion
for Carcassonne. We played with The Expansion as well (helpful since we had 6
players). This was a light game given the variance in age and experience in
the group.

Builders and Traders adds a great new mechanic which creates a sort of “co-
opetition” – there’s now an incentive to finish certain buildings that supply
trade goods. No longer is it a no-brainer to ensure your opponent’s buildings
remain incomplete. If there are special tiles in the building for trade goods,
if you finish the building you get those goods. The player with the most of a
particular good at the end of the game gets 10 bonus points.

There are 2 new “meeples” in the game: Pig (we call him “piggle”) and Builder.
The Pig is placed like a farmer, but doesn’t score points on his own –
instead, he increases the value of each of the cities supplied by your farmers
in the pig’s region. The builder is placed on either a road or a building, and
when you extend the builder’s road or city, you get to take an extra tile and
place it.

In this game, I got over-committed to one particularly large city with a
cathedral that I ultimately had no hope of finishing. I finished second-to-
last, barely edging out my 6 year old son. Jeremy, clearly a seasoned
Carcassonne player, played a disciplined game and scored some bonuses for
trade goods. He won by a good margin.

Since the bulk of the group had arrived (minus Ken and Brandon), we decided to
play a round of Apples to Apples “by the book”. i say by the book because
within the family we usually don’t play with the timing rules. I’ve found
that, particularly with large groups, the timing rule (last card played
doesn’t count) really speeds the game along. This was a fun game – great way
to get to know the new guys (Matt, Jeremy, Elliott), but I was ready to move
on to something a bit meatier.

The Jacob and Matthew decided to teach Brandon how to play the Cities and
Knights expansion to Settlers. Needless to say, a 6 and 8 year old explaining
this non-trivial expansion to a 12 year old was a bit tough, but they got
through a few rounds. They tired after several rounds and decided to go play
computer games.

Everyone wanted to stay together for our next game, so we had limited choices
for 6 players. I had seen Drakon played when I was at the WizKids store in
Redmond and thought it looked interesting, so we gave this a whirl.

Drakon is a dungeon-crawling game that reminded me of Zombies, though it does
have a bit more depth. There’s a degree of strategy, but not enough to keep me
interested. Testament to that is the fact that I had to go to the restroom,
and my opponents were able to play my last two turns for me (I ended up
winning). I’d play it again if forced, but don’t think I’ll be buying it
anytime soon.

This was the first play of my new copy of Piratenbucht – unfortunately I
didn’t get to play! I spent about 15 minutes explaining the rules, showing off
my english language tavern cards, then set them on their way. There was some
rule confusion at times, but they found their way through it and had a great
game. Ken came from behind in the last round to win the game. They played the
semi-random Blackbeard variant, where he moves either 1 or 2 islands forward
each turn after players have chosen their island.

I love this card game! I first played it with Andy Christensen up in Bellevue
WA and had recently bought a copy for myself. Julie, Matt, and I only had time
for 1 hand since Matt had to get going. I think Julie and Matt enjoyed the
game.

Wyatt Earp is a rummy-style card game with a Western theme. Melds represent
your efforts to capture an outlaw like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, etc. Turns
out we were not exactly playing by the rules (we forgot that you can only play
one sheriff card per turn and that each outlaw starts with a $1000 reward).

I was in Providence, RI last week for a business trip, and had a few hours
after my meeting before I had to head to the airport. I did a Google search
for game stores near my hotel in downtown Providence, and discovered The
Gamekeeper (unrelated to the Hasbro/WOTC/Game Keeper).

I immediately started talking to the friendly owner, Lawrence Whalen, who gave
some good recommendations on games to buy for a friend who’s birthday was
coming up (Age of
Steam andCarcassonne: Hunters and
Gatherers). Walking
around his small store, I got a bit curious since I saw a nice computer setup
with dual monitors, and I noticed that he was running Adobe Photoshop with
some artwork. Turns out that Lawrence doesn’t just run a game shop, he also
has a game company: Face 2 Face Games. Their
first major project is a re-release of the Sid Sackson Classic I’m the Boss. I personally haven’t played the original, but it looks like a good family
game that might have some mass-market appeal.

I encountered a strange bug in how ASP.NET generates sample SOAP
request/responses in .NET 1.1 (this may be the case on 1.0 as well – haven’t
tested). Take a look at this very simple web service, that includes a header:

Notice how messed up the sample response is – for some reason, it is embedding
what actually is the result XML (DoSomethingResult) in the header. There are
two triggers to cause this bug (fyi, the service appears to actually work
properly, so this isn’t a big deal).

There needs to be a header with generic XmlElement member.

There needs to be a return: attribute on the operation that has an empty (“”) namespace qualifier. Change this namespace to “foo”, and you’ll see the proper sample response. Strange.

We took the short trip to Lincoln City, OR this
weekend for some yurt camping atDevils Lake. Tent camping in
the spring in Oregon is always a risk (unless you like lying in mud), so
rather than stay home we’ve started exploring the various state parks that
offer yurts. Hardly roughing
it, but we still cook outside, make s’mores by the campfire, and explore the
waterways in our canoe. I also took some pictures
with my new Nikon Coolpix 2500 digital camera.

Devils Lake was much more interesting than I expected. The fishing was great –
we landed 6 decent size hatchery rainbows (all catch and release with the
exception of one poor guy that didn’t survive a hook swallow – we gave him to
our camping neighbors).